


A Collection of Nouns

by Nestra



Series: Creator's Favorites [21]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Gay Character, Explicit Consent, Homophobic Language, M/M, Mortality, No Call Down the Hawk Spoilers, Sexual Identity, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-12-14 16:17:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21018653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nestra/pseuds/Nestra
Summary: A series of conversations about the important stuff.





	1. fidelity

**Author's Note:**

> This is complete, and I'll be posting one chapter per day. The rating is for the whole work. Chapter 3 is the explicit one, and the other three are Teen and Up.
> 
> Thanks to shrift for beta.

It took a few months before any of the assholes at Aglionby—which, to be honest, meant most of the students—found out about Adam and Ronan.

They hadn't gone to any lengths to hide it, because Ronan refused to be ashamed and Adam had adopted the _fake it 'til you make it_ strategy. If you knew what to look for, Ronan glowed with smug possessiveness. The other students didn't know what to look for, and it was none of their damn business.

So they held hands, when Ronan wasn't pretending to be aloof and untouchable. They bumped shoulders. Adam stretched an arm along the back of a restaurant booth, and Ronan leaned into it. Eventually, someone saw enough and drew the right conclusion.

The most obnoxious ones spat out the predictable obscenities when Gansey wasn't around to provide a buffer. The ones who thought they were clever sidled up to Adam between classes.

"Parrish! How's Lynch doing? Is he lonely out there on the farm? Keeping himself entertained with the cows?" Laughter all around, maybe a couple of high fives. Adam stuck with the tactics that he'd learned long ago, when he'd had more frightening interactions to avoid—keep his head down, don't provide any additional ammunition.

He measured his remaining time at Aglionby in months. Soon he would be counting days. Even so, some of the jabs hit home.

"Does Lynch buy you something pretty every time you go down on him? You picked a rich one, Parrish."

But most of what they tried to wound him with missed the mark, because they'd never understood Ronan, not at all.

"Lynch isn't even graduating. Isn't he worried you're going to find another girlfriend when he's not around? Some brainiac more like you?"

"No, I bet it's the other way around. As soon as you look away, he'll be putting his dick in anything he can catch."

It was a taunt meant to torment him, to wake him up in the middle of the night, wracked with doubt. But he didn't have to think about it. As if thinking would somehow lead to the conclusion that Ronan might cheat on him. He couldn't even form the thought. It was like worrying that the moon would wane one month and never return. Ronan was forever.

He didn't tell Ronan about the harassment. Ronan had left Aglionby behind and put everything associated with it out of his mind. Their time together was rare enough, grabbed in between school and jobs and preparing for college, and Adam didn't want to waste it talking about people they hated.

But he should have known that Ronan would find out somehow. That one of those stupid kids would see him in town, pull up next to him at a stoplight and mouth off. If it had happened when Ronan was alone, he might have flipped the guy off and let it go. Instead, they were both in the car, on one of the rare weekend days Adam had free.

The BMW whipped by Finn Calloway's forest green Range Rover, which probably set Calloway off. Ronan noticed, of course, with instincts honed by what he called illegal street races and Adam thought of as obnoxious tantrums. Though he didn't think Ronan would necessarily disagree with that.

Calloway pulled up alongside them at the next stop sign. Ronan didn't turn his head, but Adam saw his eyes flick over in the direction of the open window. Calloway, whose sense of humor ran even more juvenile than most of his classmates', made an obscene gesture with his hand and mouth. Then, in case Ronan and Adam had somehow missed the point, he yelled "Cocksuckers!" and floored the gas pedal, tires squealing as his car peeled away.

Ronan's thin lips tightened, and his nostrils flared with his exasperated sigh.

"It's not like he's wrong," Adam pointed out.

Ronan ignored this and drove the remaining miles to St. Agnes, pulling into the parking spot designated for Father Ocampo. Adam had tried to argue him out of this behavior numerous times until he had to accept that Ronan's fondness for chaos outweighed any concern for rules and laws.

Also, Ronan was a contrary bastard, which Adam had known, but he thought it was a good idea to test Ronan's mulishness occasionally.

They tromped up the stairs to Adam's apartment, and Adam barely gotten the door locked before Ronan turned to him, vibrating like a tuning fork that had been struck against his own knee.

"Why didn't you tell me what was going on?"

Adam shrugged, the door cool against his back. "Because it's stupid. It doesn't mean anything."

"Like that place wasn't shitty enough."

"What do you want me to do about it, Ronan? Go to the administration and complain about bullying? Get Gansey to have a serious talk and wag his finger at them? You know acknowledging it will only make it worse." He pushed off the door and took the five steps over to the bed, toeing off his shoes before folding down onto it.

Adam lying on the bed was always an open invitation for Ronan to join him, but Ronan hadn't finished siphoning his anger into motion. His furious strides took him rapidly from one side of the room to the other, only briefly stopping when he flung his jacket off and away. "I should have fucking known."

"What difference would it make?" Ronan shook his head, but Adam pushed on. "Seriously. We both knew this would happen. Or we would have if we'd stopped to think about it, which would have been a waste of time."

"Then I should have done something."

"Like what? Do you want to break up with me?"

"Of course not." Ronan looked betrayed at the suggestion.

"It's not worth it. Not the time or the effort or the mental energy to even think about those assholes. I don't give a shit what they think about me. Not anymore." How could he, when Ronan made him true just by looking at him?

He turned on his side in the bed and laid his arm out, a demand cloaked as a suggestion. Ronan huffed out a few irritated breaths before sitting on the edge of the bed and tugging off his boots. Adam refused to compromise about shoes on the bed, since shoes led to dirty sheets, which led to extra laundry.

Even in his arms, it felt like Ronan was still pacing, churning and furious. Adam stroked his back through the thin cotton of his shirt. "It's only a few more months." The words were almost meaningless, something comforting he'd thought to himself so often over his term at Aglionby, measuring his remaining effort by the months left in a year, the days left in a semester, the hours left in a study session before he could finally sleep.

"We'll have different problems when you leave," Ronan muttered, his mouth pressed to Adam's bicep.

Adam took a breath, forcing it past the butterflies in his stomach. "Look, in case you're worried that I might...with someone else..."

"I'm not."

And he wouldn't, no more than Ronan would. Any injuries they had would be self-inflicted. He could already predict the fights—over money, time, valuing something too much and something else too little. Knowing they were coming wouldn't prevent them, but maybe it would at least prepare them.

He could feel the tension easing out of Ronan with each stroke of his fingers, each brush of Ronan's breath against his skin. He nudged at Ronan's forehead with a kiss, and when Ronan shifted to look at him, he leaned down to take his mouth, gently. Ronan parted his lips and let his tongue slip out to touch Adam's, his hand coming up to trail his thumb along Adam's jaw and down to his neck.

Ronan had thrown his heart open wide, letting Adam see him when he was melancholy, when he was excited, when he was sad or angry or confused, and most terrifying of all, when he was happy. What else could Adam do, but be true to that?


	2. insecurity

His mother was a dim and dusty figure at the bottom of the steps, a wraith outlined by the streetlights below. He stopped halfway down, feeling Ronan almost bump into him. For a moment, Ronan's inhaled breath was the only thing that existed in his world.

He turned to Ronan, still looming one step over him. "Can you wait in the car?"

Ronan's gaze flicked down to Adam's mother, then back to Adam, sharp as a knife blade. "I'm not leaving."

"I know. Just wait in the car. I won't be long."

Ronan slipped past him, heading down the stairs and past Adam's mother as if she didn't exist. Adam followed slowly, feeling each step thud under his feet and echo through his body like the memory of past blows.

He waited for her to say something. To ask how he had been doing, about his plans for college, whether he needed anything. If he was cold at night under his too-thin blanket, or tired of eating peanut butter sandwiches and ramen noodles.

And then she began to speak, something about his father and his job, and the words smeared across his damaged hearing until he almost wished he couldn't hear at all.

*

"Did you give her money?" Ronan sat in the driver's seat of the BMW, staring out the windshield at nothing.

Adam shrugged, hoping they could avoid an argument, and knowing it was inevitable. They'd driven to the Barns in silence, leaving Adam with nothing to do but mentally replay the encounter. He didn't know what he'd expected. He'd faced down his father three times since the night he left what was never his home: in his apartment, in the courtroom, at the trailer.

But no sight of his mother until she came to him, a proxy for his father. It was always about Robert Parrish, in the end.

"I only had a twenty in my wallet anyway."

"How long was that supposed to last you?"

Adam shrugged. It was unimportant, in the way that money was always unimportant to him—such a constant struggle and worry that he could barely think about it, because he was always thinking about it. "My dad lost his job."

"Good," Ronan spat out. "Let him starve."

"You don't understand."

"You're goddamn right I don't. You don't owe them anything. That's your fucking money."

"Yeah, it is," Adam said, "and I decide what to do with it."

Ronan slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. Adam didn't flinch. "You won't take anything from us. Me, Gansey, not even Sargent."

Adam assumed he was waiting for an answer, but it wasn't a question. Ronan turned, pinned him with a stare, but a stare wasn't a question either.

"Don't fucking do this, Parrish."

"Do what?" He could hear it, the avoidance in his voice, the distancing. He didn't want to do it, but he was pushing Ronan in one direction and himself in another.

Ronan flung the car door open and got out. The Barns didn't have any exterior lights, nothing to interfere with the scattered blanket of stars, but stones lined the path to the front steps. When you needed them, they pulsed with a quiet glow, guiding you inside.

He followed that glow. At the top of the steps, a hand reached out to him. He let it tug him down the porch and push him against one of the stone columns. And Ronan cupped Adam's face in his gentle hands.

"It's okay, Parrish. You got it? It's okay."

He inhaled, let it out on a shuddering breath. Ronan moved in and laid his head on Adam's shoulder, hands sliding down his body to embrace him.

Adam chuckled weakly, still sick with emotion. "How are you the well-adjusted one?"

"You take that back, asshole."

He wrapped his arms around Ronan and pulled him in tight, pulled them together until the tension inside him began to ease, letting the void fill with Ronan's stubborn and relentless caring. He became aware that his head was throbbing.

Ronan waited for him, not moving until Adam released him. Then he elbowed him ungently in the stomach and turned to enter the house. Adam followed inside, idly noting the botanical carnage Opal had strewn around the kitchen, splintered branches and torn leaves filling the room with a bright green scent.

"I know you don't understand."

Ronan turned from the open door of the refrigerator with packages of cold cuts in his hand. "You think I don't understand how parents can fuck you up? Trust me, I got that." He tossed the food on the table and snagged bread from its place on the counter.

"Especially your dad," he added. It was the closest they ever came to mentioning the abuse and the violence, other than when Adam laid his head on Ronan's chest and Ronan tenderly stroked his left ear.

Adam pulled out three plates, because Ronan was making food for Opal and himself, and it was okay to share that. It wasn't the same thing as letting Ronan feed him. A bullshit distinction, maybe, but it helped keep the peace. Adam tried not to let it happen too often. And it was just a sandwich. A sandwich wasn't that much.

"I don't want to be like him," Adam said, the kind of confession he normally reserved for midnight whispers, giving his confessor sins and fears that were no secret.

"You're not," Ronan said matter-of-factly, slapping turkey onto dry bread. Opal refused condiments of any kind, and Adam suspected that Ronan did the same thing just to be difficult. "You couldn't be."

He wanted to believe that. He would try.

"Okay," he said. "Thanks."

"Get the lettuce out of the fridge. You need to eat a fucking vegetable, and she needs to eat something green that's not grass. And there's leftover soup, if she hasn't eaten it and the container."

"Ronan—" Adam began to protest.

Ronan dropped a plate on the table with a clang. "Look, you're working through your shit, and it's not like I'm not fucked-up. But if you need food, you buy it. You need a doctor, you go. You're fucking independent, whatever. But you will take money from me if you need it for those things. If it makes you feel better, it's because I'm selfish and I don't want you to starve."

"It's not that simple."

Ronan held his gaze. "Yes, it is."

Adam was self-aware enough to know that Ronan tolerated a lot of his quirks and sore spots, the same way he put up with Ronan's foul mouth, stubbornness, and occasional bouts of self-destructiveness. Together, they were figuring out what being in a relationship meant, without much of a model to follow.

Sometimes it meant spending a lazy afternoon in bed, tangled up in the sheets and each other; sometimes it meant waking up at 3:00 AM to find Ronan gone and knowing he was driving on a back road somewhere, too fast for his own safety.

Sometimes it meant pushing each other away. It always meant pulling each other back.

"Okay," he said again, forcing it out past the tightness in his throat.

Ronan held a plate out to him, smart enough to stay quiet and take the win.

"But don't touch my car," he added.

Ronan rolled his eyes as he headed to the foot of the stairs to call Opal. "God forbid I touch the shitbox and accidentally make it not a piece of shit."

Adam smiled to himself and opened the refrigerator to grab some mayonnaise for his sandwich.


	3. sexuality

On a dull February afternoon, over pizza at Nino's, Blue asked, "So, any plans to join an LGBTQ group at college?"

Adam blinked as his brain ground to a halt, his slice of pepperoni momentarily forgotten. "I...don't know?"

"I thought you had everything planned," she teased. "Down to what shower organizer you're gonna buy."

He grabbed a balled-up straw wrapper from the table and lobbed it at her. "I haven't been thinking about anything beyond applications and final exams."

She took a bite of her slice and chewed for a minute. Adam knew that she and Gansey had started lobbying to take a year off after they graduated so they could road-trip around the country. Maura protested each time they brought up the subject, but not loudly or profanely, so Adam figured the odds were good.

"Do you identify as bi, or whatever? I mean, we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."

"No, it's fine," he said. "I just haven't really tried to put a label on it." He'd never worried about his sexual identity. That was a topic that other people had time for, time when they weren't in school or working or chasing a dead king. Before Blue, it hadn't mattered. After Ronan, it wasn't a question. 

"I guess I'm bi," he continued. He tried to picture his father's face if he ever heard his son say those words. Though Robert Parrish probably didn't believe bisexual people existed. Adam was sleeping with another man, therefore he was a "fairy" or "pansy."

"What about Ronan?"

He scoffed. "Like I've had that conversation with Ronan. He'd probably rather go back to Aglionby than talk about it."

It wasn't like he didn't know. Ronan had never said anything about a girl, looked at one, or given any indication that he found one attractive. But what did it matter? His sexuality was the warm weight of Ronan, pressing him down. The scratch of stubble across his skin, the quiet words whispered in the dark. And he knew Ronan would agree.

"It might be nice if you found a group. Give you a place to talk about things." She pinned him with one of those alarmingly direct stares that let you know how much she saw, and that she didn't need to be psychic to do it. "Meet people who understand that part of your life better than we do."

"Easy for you to say," Adam deflected. "You've always known you had a true love waiting for you."

Her lips pursed for a second, like she was channeling a disapproving Calla. "You're leaving out the part where he died when I kissed him. I don't think there's a support group for that."

"It worked out okay, didn't it?"

She tossed the straw wrapper back at him and stole his Coke.

*

Boyd always closed the garage for the week between Christmas and New Year's, and that year, Adam called in a favor and swapped shifts at the trailer factory so that he had the whole week free. Declan and Matthew came to the Barns for Christmas Day, Opal went to Fox Way, and then the rest of the week was theirs, only theirs.

They spent the first two days in bed, eating whatever Ronan could dream up, with only brief breaks when the need for showers became truly unavoidable. It was almost the first chance they'd had to do any kind of exploration beyond quick hand jobs and one memorable night of swapping blow jobs. They finally left behind their Garden of Eden on the third day, emerging into the snow-covered landscape broken only by the tracks of the animals roaming the Barns.

The snowball fight lasted for an hour. The shower they took to warm up afterwards lasted almost as long.

His body became a new thing to him. It had always been a tool, something to get him through school and work, something to absorb his father's abuse, his mother's disinterest. It required fuel and rest, and he resented its demands and limitations.

Now it was a vibrant instrument capable of giving pleasure and receiving love. He could make Ronan quiet and still with a touch, or use his mouth to wring cries out of him. He could share Ronan's breath and bed. They could look at each other from across a room and know what it felt like to satisfy their desires.

His happiness had an inescapable undercurrent of hunger, and he knew that it always would. If he could resist trying to tame the wild edge of Ronan's joy, maybe Ronan wouldn't worry about fully satiating him.

*

But one night not long after that conversation with Blue, after he and Ronan had spent too many hours poking each other's emotional tender spots for no good reason, he gave into an impulse he'd always had.

"Kavinsky was gay, right?"

"What the fuck?" Ronan didn't even look at him. "Why are you bringing up that asshole?"

"Something Blue said a while ago."

"Blue asked you about him?"

"No," Adam said. "She just—I'll tell you about it later. What about Kavinsky?"

Ronan stilled, tossing aside the game controller he was holding. "Shit, I don't know. He was something. Call it what you want. Gay, queer, fucked up."

"Did he...did you…"

Ronan's stare froze Adam in place, and for every second that passed, he envisioned something else Ronan and Kavinsky might have done in those dark and dreaming times they'd spent together. He hated himself for asking the question. 

"Maybe," Ronan said finally. "If you hadn't been around."

He felt as sick from relief as he had from the question. "Sorry. I shouldn't have asked."

Ronan shrugged, muscles and joints bared by his sleeveless tee. "I don't give a shit. It's just kind of random."

"She just got me thinking about stuff. Identities and labels."

"That really matters?"

"Yes. And no." He tried to figure out how to explain it. Maybe, if he could, he'd know how he felt. "It doesn't matter, because this—" He gestured between himself and Ronan. "I don't need to label it. I know what it is. But it does, because for a long time, I was nothing. Just a kid. A regret."

A waste of space, his father had said more than once. Not worth the money we spend on feeding you.

"Then I was a student, and a friend. And…I'm bi. It's another piece of who I am."

Ronan, who had not only paid attention but actually let Adam see that he was paying attention, slid closer to him on the couch. Close enough for their thighs to press together. Adam could reach out and touch the tattoo that curled over Ronan's shoulder, so he did. And as always, touching it made him want to put his mouth on it. So he did.

As he kissed Ronan's shoulder and began working his way up Ronan's neck, he tasted sweat and skin and warmth. Ronan's hand settled on the back of his head, his fingers spread and cradling. With a tug on his hair, Ronan pulled him up into a hot, lingering kiss.

Then he moved to press a kiss to Adam's cheek. Lips moving against his skin, he said, "I know who you are."

*

It wasn't that he wanted Ronan all the time, but that anything could make him want Ronan. The sight of Ronan's mouth shaping itself around his name. Ronan, in the distance, the shape of him framed against the purple evening sky. The whiff of scent that came from his pillow when Adam changed the sheets.

As for Ronan, he liked Adam in tight t-shirts that he pulled out of the dreamspace. Tussling had an excellent chance of turning into rubbing off against each other. And of course, he'd made no secret of his appreciation for Adam's hands. All Ronan had to do was kiss one of his fingers, and Adam went helplessly hard, knowing what came next.

He did whatever Adam wanted. Ronan kissed him while Adam brought himself to orgasm, let Adam blow him in the BMW, rode Adam until they were both gasping, lay still and allowed Adam to come all over his stomach and chest. 

He was happy, eager to take whatever Adam offered. But he never asked for anything.

Adam vaguely knew, in the back of his mind, that Ronan hadn't ever fucked him, or made a move towards suggesting he wanted to. He thought about it a couple of times, when it seemed like they were heading in that direction, Ronan grinding against his back while he jerked Adam off, or Adam breathlessly begging as Ronan thrust between his thighs. It just—didn't happen.

Then, one night, Ronan had him pinned, a wild grin on his face as he held Adam's wrists above his head with one hand and slowly jacked him with the other. They were a mess of lube and sweat, and Adam thought he might go mad with how much he wanted him.

He rolled his hips up into Ronan's grasp, again and again, and when the hand on his wrists loosened, he took advantage of Ronan's inattention to roll them over. Adam rode out his initial struggles, settling his weight over Ronan's hips until Ronan stilled, and Adam realized that Ronan's cock was right there, sliding up and teasing against his hole. He moaned, rocking back against it for a second before the world spun and Ronan held him down again, this time with both hands.

He sucked at the skin under Adam's ear, bit at his earlobe, while Adam thought, _wait_.

"Wait," he managed to say.

Ronan hummed in acknowledgment but kept kissing him.

"Wait," he said again, more firmly. 

"What, Parrish?" Three puffs of breath against his skin.

He lost his train of thought when Ronan licked at him, but wrenched it back on target. "You know you can fuck me, right?"

"Do we have to stop and talk right now?"

"I mean it," he insisted.

"Fuck," Ronan breathed into his neck, not happily, then slid off Adam onto his side.

"Do you not want to?" Adam tried, after a few silent seconds. "I mean, it's okay if you don't."

He looked over at Ronan in time to catch the eye roll. Not that, then.

"Do you think it's too gay, or something? Like I'm going to suddenly realize you have a dick? Because I had noticed that."

"Do you have to make this a thing?" Ronan said.

"I'm not," Adam protested. "But if you want it, why can't we try it? Aren't we past the point of you being afraid I'm going to change my mind?"

Ronan rolled his head on the pillow as a substitute for a head shake. "That's not it."

"Then what is it?"

"I don't want to hurt you," Ronan said quietly.

Adam paused. "Pretty sure I remember you running and pushing a grocery cart with me in it until we crashed into your car."

Another head roll. "That's different."

"Why?"

"You know why."

He did. _Why_ was the reason he couldn't turn over to face Ronan and bury his right ear in the pillow. Ronan had seen it happen. Gansey and Blue had seen the wreckage left behind, but Ronan was a witness to the impact.

"Okay," Adam said. "I understand."

"Yeah?"

"I understand that you're being stupid."

"Funny," Ronan said with narrowed eyes, "I'm not feeling very understood."

"What you're worried about—it doesn't even exist in the same world as us. I don't want you thinking about it. It's just you and me here."

Ronan studied him, and Adam let him. He didn't want to pressure Ronan into it. He didn't want to have a serious and respectful conversation about it. He just wanted Ronan to trust him.

"You want to?" Ronan murmured, a finger coming up to trail along Adam's jawline, and suddenly it was a seduction.

"Yeah, I want to," Adam whispered.

Ronan seemed to have firm opinions about how it should happen, so Adam let himself be kissed and caressed and turned to lie on his left side. He grabbed behind his right knee when Ronan gently pushed it up. Ronan teased him with two lube-slick fingers and began pressing into him as he mouthed at Adam's shoulder blade.

It felt strange, but not bad. Certainly not painful. Intimate, in a different way from having Ronan in his mouth. And he could tell that it was turning Ronan on. His kisses got sloppier, less focused, and his cock brushed against Adam repeatedly with the small movements of his hips.

And Ronan was obviously determined that no matter what Adam said, it wasn't going to hurt at all, as he got more lube again and again, thoroughly opening Adam up until Adam grabbed at his wrist and pleaded with him.

He could hear himself speaking, "Please, Ronan, do it, please," but it sounded like the words were coming from somewhere else, like the only thing really happening was the push of Ronan's cock into him until he was pressed against Adam from chest to knees.

And then he didn't move.

"Ronan, goddamnit," he cursed, trying to twist his neck to look back at him, and Ronan's fingers tightened on his hip.

"Stay fucking still unless you want this over right now." Ronan pressed his forehead against Adam's back, and Adam marveled again that he could overwhelm Ronan Lynch, who stared at the world with cool disdain. So for Ronan, he tried to relax, slow his breathing and focus on the sensations beyond his desperate need to move. He pried Ronan's hand free, moved it up to his mouth and kissed the base of his palm.

Ronan rocked into him gently, just a small motion forward and back.

"Yeah," Adam moaned, lighting up with the spark inside him. "Come on."

Each distinct motion soon blurred into waves of pleasure, every sound Ronan made, every touch, until his head spun with it. He felt like he might split open and knew that it would hardly take anything to push him over the edge.

Behind him, Ronan panted harshly, "Adam, Adam," then dug his teeth into Adam's shoulder, and Adam could feel the throbbing as he came. Desperately, he maneuvered their joined hands down to his cock and guided Ronan through a couple of strokes, and he came over their hands in a flash of pleasure, Ronan still inside him, whispering words in his ear that he could hear perfectly.


	4. mortality

Between his father's murder, his mother's unmaking, and his little brother's provenance, Ronan's perspective on death was a little skewed. So when Robert Parrish died, in the summer between Adam's sophomore and junior years, Adam didn't expect to discuss it with Ronan much.

He assumed he'd go to the funeral alone. Ronan assumed otherwise.

"Why wouldn't I come?" he asked, leaning back on the pillows propped up against the headboard.

Adam pulled one of his suits out of the closet. He had two now, the second one acquired in expectation of internship and grad school interviews. The new navy one stayed in the closet, and the dark gray one came out. "You hate funerals. And most gatherings of any kind. And my father."

"You hate your father too."

"But he was my father." He'd probably never make peace with his feelings about his father, but he knew that at least he didn't want to be the kind of person who skipped his father's funeral. The lightweight wool would still be miserable in the July heat. He'd have to get it dry-cleaned after.

"You don't want me to come?" Ronan didn't look at him, fiddling with something Adam didn't recognize, almost certainly a dream object. He couldn't figure out its purpose; parts of it flipped open and folded around the sides and back, but though roughly box-shaped, it didn't seem to contain anything. Or seem capable of containing anything.

Adam draped the garment bag over the bottom of the bed. "I don't know." He had a hard time envisioning Ronan standing next to him at his father's grave, but he couldn't picture himself there either. It was something he'd have to get through by living it, and he couldn't prepare for it.

In a sense, Adam had long ago made himself an orphan. His mother's half-hearted attempts to maintain a relationship with him hadn't lasted long in the face of his father's active hostility. Maybe if it had only been a question of his college career and upward social mobility, they could have achieved some kind of lukewarm reciprocal interest.

But Ronan had always been a wall that his parents couldn't see over.

He couldn't allow himself to forget that Ronan had once had parents too, who loved him far more and better than Adam's loved him. And he'd had to face the bloody, violent aftermath of both of their murders.

Ronan had slowly opened that pain to Adam, allowing Adam to see him grieve when something in the Barns triggered a memory, when a scent reminded him of his uncomplicated childhood. In return, Adam had done his best to comfort Ronan without letting any resentment taint it.

Hard to believe sometimes that Ronan was the lucky one.

"I'm not sorry he's dead. I'm not." What was the next step? He unzipped the garment bag to double-check that the tie and belt were still inside.

"No," Ronan agreed. "You're pissed that he'll never come crawling back to you and admit that he was wrong."

"That never would have happened."

"I know. You're pissed about that too."

Adam stood still for a moment, examining himself for that anger, or for grief. For anything. "I just don't understand why you'd want to come."

Ronan shrugged and set the dream object down on the bedside table, then folded his hands behind his head. "Do you want to keep going in circles on this until we both die? That's one way of getting out of the fucking thing."

"Not funny." He'd never forgotten the sight of Ronan, lying on a pew in St. Agnes, dying before their eyes. He was sure Ronan hadn't either.

"Fine, not in the mood for stupid jokes. I'm coming with you, unless you tell me you don't want me there."

Adam sat down on the bed and rested a hand on Ronan's thigh. "Okay. Thanks."

Ronan reached down and took his hand, tangling their fingers together.

"At least I'll get to see you in a suit," Adam said. "You look good in a suit."

*

He had no idea how his mother could afford the funeral. If it was anyone or anything else in his life, he might have suspected Ronan of lending a hand, but Ronan would sooner sell the Barns than do anything for Adam's father. Maybe they'd taken up a collection at his dad's new job.

They walked into the chapel at the funeral home, everything blurring into harsh light and beige carpet, black-clad forms moving around. He guided Ronan to a row in the back and gestured at his mother with a flick of his head. Ronan stared at him for a moment, then stepped in a few seats and sat down.

There were more attendees at the service than he'd expected. He'd never really seen his father around anyone else besides him and his mother, other than the occasional neighbor. He'd always assumed that to the rest of the world, Robert Parrish looked like an average man. Worked for a living, went home at night, got up the next day and did it again. So maybe he'd had friends. Only Adam had seen the monster.

With the benefit of a few years, his sight had improved. Deepened. He understood what poverty did to people. How fear and want and hardship could make you small and ugly. His father would never have been able to fight back against his bosses or his creditors. So he'd taken it out on Adam.

Adam knew now that the problem had always been with his father, not with him. But he would always be branded with that feeling of worthlessness, no matter how much Ronan and Gansey and Blue tried to heal him.

His mother looked up as he approached. "I wasn't sure you'd come," she said. He couldn't tell if she'd been crying. She seemed tired, but he didn't remember her any other way.

"Ronan and I are sitting in the back." He looked at Ronan, a slash of dissonance in the room. In his black suit, white shirt, and black tie, he managed to look like a different species than the other people wearing the exact same outfit.

She didn't turn her head. "I'm glad you're here."

He thought she might expect him to hug her or put his arm around her shoulder, but she didn't move any closer, and he didn't know what else to say. After a second, someone approached her from the other side, and Adam headed back to his seat.

He'd never been to a funeral before. A man with one of those white collars stood up and said things about his father—how hard he'd worked, how he'd supported his family, how he'd followed God's teachings. Ronan pried his fingers from where they were clenched around his knee and moved them to rest on his own leg.

How many of these people knew who he was? How many of them knew that he couldn't hear out of his left ear? How many of them just saw two men holding hands and hated them?

He stayed until the preacher stopped talking. He could do that much for his mother. When the preacher asked if anyone wanted to come up and say a few words about Robert Parrish, Adam stood up and left, and he could feel Ronan right behind him.

Halfway back to the Barns, Ronan drew a deep breath and spoke after a car ride full of silence. "Good fucking riddance." Adam slanted a look at him, and he glowered a little but didn't take his eyes off the road. "I kept my mouth shut while we were there. I didn't even think about pissing on the coffin. But I'm not going to pretend to be sorry he's gone. I hope he's burning in hell."

Maybe it was unhealthy for Adam to agree. Maybe he should go to a therapist and excavate the whole mess his father had left him with, the insecurity and worthlessness and fear. It had been a day full of maybes and mights and shoulds, and he was so sick of trying to figure out how he was supposed to feel.

"He's dead," Adam said. "Let him stay dead."

*

Adam never stopped trying to figure out the limits and rules of Ronan's dreaming. As they'd learned, pulling too much out of the dreamspace could deplete it, but there was a lot of room between zero and Kavinksy's insane plundering. Ronan tended to fly by the seat of his pants, but he played along with Adam's questions, and even the occasional spreadsheet.

Experiments that had succeeded: socks that always kept your feet warm, a flower that smelled like your best memory, a self-refilling refrigerator full of snacks (mostly Slim Jims and Twinkies), a magnifying glass that translated text into Farsi.

Experiments that had failed: a device that turned off the lights in Declan's condo when he sneezed, the final novel of A Song of Ice and Fire, a pill that let Adam take things out of dreams, any clothes that Opal could not destroy, macaroni and cheese.

Even so, Ronan looked startled when Adam said to him, "Could you...could you bring someone back from the dead?"

"Shit, Parrish, did you kill someone?" Ronan leaned down to pick up some kind of farming tool that Adam didn't recognize. They were sorting through one of the barns, an endless job given how many barns there were and how much junk filled each one.

"Very funny," Adam said. "I'm serious. We've talked about this before, how miracles attributed to gods could actually be the work of dreamers. Water that turns into wine? Herbs that treat incurable diseases? Flames that always burn, even without fuel?"

"You talked. I mostly ignored you, because you're a heathen." Ronan held up the tool in his hand to the faint sunlight coming in through the barn's high windows. It looked to Adam like a hand saw, but curved and with a longer handle. Ronan turned it around, inspected the other side, then shrugged and tossed it off to a cluttered corner.

Adam grabbed him by the arm. "Will you pay attention?"

"What the fuck?" Ronan said, pulling out of Adam's grasp. "Why is this suddenly such a big deal?"

"I don't know," Adam said. He felt like his whole life was becoming a ticking clock—his internship started in two weeks, and after that, it was straight into his junior year and decisions about grad school versus work experience.

"Is someone sick?" Ronan asked. When Adam didn't answer immediately, he stepped closer, enough to brush Adam's shoulder with his own. "Are you?'

"No, no," Adam hurried to say. "Sorry, no one's sick. I just…"

Ronan swung from concern into annoyance. "Then what? A funeral made you think about death? That's such a cliché." 

"I didn't mean to scare you," Adam said instead of answering the question. Ronan, already moving back to the other side of the barn, let out a dismissive huff. "It's a reasonable question, though. What if you could dream a cure for cancer?"

Ronan had turned away from him, so Adam couldn't see what was happening, only hear the loud clanks as Ronan dug through the waist-high pile in front of him. He threw two more farming tools into the same corner, then had to jump out of the way when the destabilized pile slid toward him, as if in retaliation.

"To pull something out," he finally said, "I have to be able to see it. Visualize it. Something like that, something that could affect everyone in the world—I think it's too big."

Adam nodded thoughtfully. "What about something that affected a smaller group? Or just one person?" 

He'd learned this much from his father's death: it didn't change anything. Death didn't suddenly make some sins forgivable. It didn't create love where none had existed. He hadn't gone to the funeral out of any respect for his father's memory or his mother's loss. He'd gone to shut a door. 

He lived on the other side of that door now, and what had happened behind it didn't matter anymore.

Ronan slid open the barn door so that the afternoon sunlight flooded in. A warm wind ushered in the fresh air, dust motes dancing in the light. Ronan, the sun, the wind, the air. Adam wanted it all.

"Something that could save one person," Ronan repeated. "Yeah, I think that's worth a try."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on Dreamwidth as [Nestra](https://nestra.dreamwidth.org/), Twitter as [@akaNestra](https://twitter.com/akaNestra) and Tumblr as [changingthingslikeleaves](https://changingthingslikeleaves.tumblr.com/).


End file.
